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A long time ago, I foolishly declared that I would find silver coins in every old park in our fair city. By sheer luck, I’ve managed to do that at almost every old park except for one; Henry park.

I got the information about Henry park’s founding from a city web page that no longer exists. If I recall, the park opened in 1886; a neighborhood park the size of a city block. Today, the park is a flat piece of land with no trees in it. The oldest trees on its periphery, could be from the 1940’s. Only recently, the city put some modern play equipment on one of its corners.

I hunted this park once or twice in the last five years and didn’t find any silver coins. Today, I wanted to give it another shot and took my XP Deus metal detector and two hours in an incredibly beautiful day. For the first hour and half, the park behaved exactly as before. I found nothing but aluminum foil and a few pieces of rusted wire (there are lots of wire at this park for some reason). However, towards the end of my hunt, the park began to act its age. At about 6 inches down I found a 1942 War nickel. A few minutes later I pulled the bottom of a shotgun shell known around these parts as a head stamp. Last came a small silver earring.

Henry park November 23 2016

I see that I need to spend more time at this park. It is incredibly trashy for not having any amenities and for not being used very much. I also suspect that sometime after the Second World War, this park was filled and graded, putting the coins from the turn of the century out of reach. I could be wrong. I aim to find out.

I hunted a site that has been active in our city’s history since its very beginnings. The school sitting there is the modern version of the school that was there in the 1870’s. Unfortunately, the dirt at this site has been moved countless times as other structures were built and torn down and at least one railway crossed it. Still, I was hopeful a coin or two may have been left unmolested in the ground.

After almost an hour of digging bits of zinc and old brass, I managed to dig a 1940 wheat cent, then my lunch hour was over. On my way back to the car I could see the thousands of square inches I did not ran my coil over, each with the potential of having a coin under it.

I have mentioned this before. If you think of the site you are working as a collection of square inches, then, maybe, you will be more careful about exploring each and every one of those square inches. I am just saying.

Again, I didn’t take a picture of my wheat; you know what a wheat looks like. I am really enjoying my metal detecting these days. I hope you all are too.

For lunch today, I returned to the Iron Pit. The Iron Pit is a segment of river bank where, a few years back, I found a number of wheats and other old bits just laying on the surface. Eventually the Iron Pit yielded silver and gold and many other cool things. One of the funnest things about the Iron Pit, was finding a relatively large number of small silver pieces; charms, small rings, bits of earrings; that sort of thing.

Along with all that, I found a number of small transportation tokens from the early days of Wichita. I suspect, although I never was able to corroborate this, that this spot was a stop in the InterUrban rail system that existed in my city before the 1940’s. This would explain the amount of coinage and tokens and the bits of silver jewelry (plus two gold rings). This would also explain the high concentration of iron there.

Since I am back to gold hunting, I decided to return to see if the rains of the past couple of years had washed up something I missed. I didn’t take a picture but today i found a number of bits of foil and two non-ferrous targets: a 1928 wheat cent and a brass ring, not the jewelry kind, more like it belonged to some machine. Both items gave nice signals and neither was deeper than five inches.

For lunch today I took Maurice, my XP Deus metal detector, to a section of river bank where I found a number of rings a few years back. My intention was to dig all mid-tones. A good number of pulltabs are no longer buried there and this:

Not too shaby. I plan on returning and finish cleaning the area of all foil and pulltabs.

Sunday evening I returned to the 1884 park with my trusty XP Deus metal detector.

I wanted to spend a little more time at the spot where I found the two Mercury dimes Saturday morning. This time I began my hunt with a high recovery speed and stayed at the same 5’x 10′ area.

I decided to try a two tone approach but it was tricky deciding on the cut-off for iron. I didn’t want to miss any small gold so I probably left the setting too low because I ended up digging about 20 rusty nails. Still, the hunt was productive:

Iron was found with every target except for the new dime, which was on the surface. The Mercury dime was a faint signal in spite of being only about six inches deep. I attribute this to the Jack that was in the hole with it. The Nickel is from 1949 and was found as part of a pocket spill with the two Wheat cents.

Let me recap so I can paint a picture for you. The area is approximately 5 feet by 10 feet. I conservatively estimate that I have dug more than 200 rusty nails and pieces of other iron from it since I began hunting the spot three years ago. During this hunt I dug two large pieces of iron near the surface. I find large pieces of iron near the surface every time I dig here. There appears to be no end to it.

Why all the iron? I surmise a structure stood here a long time ago; possibly even before the swing set stood there. I think this because I have dug very old door hinges and other pieces of iron that hold wood together from here. Theory number two is that the spot where the park now sits was used as a dump, which I understand was common on the old days. All the coins I have found here harken back to the 20’s, 30’s, and 40’s, when the swing set sat there.

There you have it. A classic case of iron masking. There is something called silent masking. As I understand it, this is the case when you hear neither the iron nor the non ferrous target being masked. In other words, the coil goes over both the iron and the coin but the detector makes no noise at all. I believe this is happening here as well.

I returned to the park this morning where I found the token the other day with the aim of exploring more deep signals with my XP Deus metal detector. I have been using the 9 inch coil lately to try to get around the trash.

I selected an area I haven’t explored in several years. I remember this area was heavily infested by foil and pull tabs but today I was amused to find out that the area was relatively clear of shallow trash. Seems like other hunters have been working the spot. After an hour of nothing but deep chunks of rusted iron, I changed my strategy. One of the beautiful things about the XP Deus is that it is ridiculously fast. At its slowest setting, it is as fast as many other machines at their fastest. This is known.

So I raised my recovery speed to 3 and moved to the 5’x10′ area where I have found 99 percent of all coins at this park. I actually watched a guy with an Etrack several years ago grid this very same spot and come up empty handed. I myself have come up empty handed several times but today, I was in a good mental place and got in the ‘zone’ quickly. I must add that the reason why a high recovery speed is necessary at this location is that if you sink your digger to about seven to eight inches randomly, you will likely find rusted nails and several small round pieces of amorphous rusted iron. I know that in the 30’s and 40’s there was play equipment here but why all the nails and other rusted iron are there I’ll never know. Here are my non-ferrous targets:

The round piece of rusted iron is a steel wheat cent. This is either the third or fourth I have dug since I began back in 2011. The rivet, I was told by my friend lawdog1, is likely from a pair of old overalls. The two mercs were around six inches deep but barely gave a signal as they were heavily masked by iron. I wonder how many more coins are there being silently masked by the insane amount of iron.

I will continue to explore this spot in the coming weeks to see if I can squeeze more silver from it.

Regardless of the heat, at lunch time today, I went to the place where I’ve found a number of old coins in the recent past. Saturday morning I took my Tesoro Compadre and cleaned a bunch of trash from the first 5-6 inches of soil. The spot is a bear in terms of iron. But it wasn’t the iron I was after, I was after all the freaking aluminum foil. As it happened, I removed a bunch of iron that was near the surface as well.

So today I took my time and decided to dig only the choosiest of signals. I was fooled a couple of times with rusted nails and I even got fooled a few times with small aluminum foil that I missed with the Compadre. By the way, I decided to take the XP Deus on this hunt. Towards the very end of my lunch hour I got a nice signal among iron. Nice and repeatable. After I dug up my obligatory 9 inch hole I stuck my pinpointer in and got an iffy bing at the bottom of the hole. This always makes me smile because that means the object is deep. Incidentally, in an effort to avoid holes-to-nowhere, I dusted off my DetectorPro Pulse Induction pinpointer. It has a reach of about 4 inches for a quarter size coin and a solid 3 inches for a dime sized coin so if I miss my pinpointing with the Deus, I can still find the target in the hole.

This particular target was about 2 inches deeper. I know, I ought to quit talking about depth. It means nothing to anyone else but me. Be that as it may, I pulled this nice 1905 Indian Head cent out of the dirt:

This IH was dropped shortly after it was minted. You can see part of the word Liberty on the headdress and the reverse has nice details on it.

And now comes a bit of ranting

Here is the list of all coins found at this relatively small spot at this park: I’d say is about 15ft x 15ft. You can see the pictures of these coins in the last 10 or so posts:
1919 Wheat
1918 Wheat
1915 Wheat
18xx V nickel
189X V nickel
1890 Indian
1905 Indian
1917 Type 1 Standing Liberty
1894 Barber quarter
1901 Barber dime
1912 Barber dime
1904 Barber dime
KS Tax Token

This list does not include the coins found by Redd and KSDave three years ago, many from this very same spot, one of which was a Seated dime.
Also, keep in mind that this park has been hunted a quadrillion times by a thousand detectorists since the hobby came about.

My point is that our old parks are choke-full of old coins but these coins are not easily accessible. You most definitely will NOT find these coins if you:
Swing too high
Swing too fast
Lift the coil at the ends of your swing
Listen poorly to the tones
Use a detector not built for these environs
Use a detector you do not know well
Do not learn from the trash you dig

I am not trying to be an ass. Really. I am just saying those of us who came into the hobby in the last 10 years have a different reality to contend with. Unless you are only hunting private properties (lucky you), you need to approach our city parks with a fresh set of expectations, philosophy, and equipment.

I went out this morning to Linwood park where I’ve been finding old coins for a while now. I left the Bliss home and took the Deus instead. I just wanted to hunt and not worry about the new detector.

The very first signal was a nice 1904 Barber with no mint mark. Then I dug a bunch of deep trash. Last I got a crackling more than a signal. The only reason I dug it is because the all metal mode told me there was a definite object down there. The target was a 2 mil Kansas tax token.

I really like my Deus. I know it. I know what it’s telling me. I just wish I could find deeper coins. 9 inches seems to be the limit for dimes. It can go deeper on larger coins of course but dimes are so much more common.

At any rate, I found that dime in the same 5×5 area around this young tree where I’ve found a number of old coins before. As you can see, there is no lack of trash. All that trash with the exception of the bottle cap was deep.

More rain is in the forecast so I don’t know when I’ll get another chance to detect.

Pardon my Bulgarian. Nah! I don’t really speak Bulgarian but I did teach myself to read the Cyrillic script. Incidentally, that last word, with four characters, spells the word ‘park’ just like in English.

I returned to the deep silver park at lunch today. Now that I can ground balance the Bliss like a boss (OK, maybe not like a boss but well enough) I wanted to let my Blisstool V3 metal detector loose on a patch of park where I have gravely removed all targets but the iron. Mind you, I have removed a lot of iron as well.

Right away, I began to get nice solid signals. I am not shocked that I found the aluminum foil. In this spot, there stood a swing set from about the 30’s to the 60’s. I have found close to a hundred of what appear to be aluminum seals for old timey milk and juice glass bottles. I remember those suckers from my childhood. Somehow I missed them with the Deus. Most were at the 7-8 inch mark. They could also be from Boy Scout and Girl Scout camp outs as I have also found a good number of Scout related items at this spot in the past. They are distinctively round and gold colored.

I was rather surprised however to pull that beaver tail pull tab. I could swear there were no such signals left here. Then I found that 1946d Wheat cent. No matter how many times I declare this spot coin free, I am proven wrong. By the way, I intend to keep on posting my Wheaties. First, because I want to prove that you can use the Blisstool V3 to detect trashy parks and still find coins. Second, when I start finding the really cool stuff, and I will, I want all the haters to know I don’t plant coins for my self-glorification and if I was to do that, I most certainly would not plant Wheats from the 40’s!

I am pleased with the progress I am making with Dragomir. I have a very good feeling about this machine.

I went out this morning for a couple of hours with my Blisstool V3 metal detector to the small park I’ve been hunting lately.

My plan was simple: dig.

It is my opinion that you cannot learn and master your metal detector unless you dig a lot of trash. To train my ear, I dug and dug and dug until I could dig no more. I dug a lot of shallow targets. By doing that, I could see that the discriminator circuitry works really well when it comes to targets down to about 7 inches. I dug some deep targets too and past 7 inches the discriminator got fooled a few times but still it was impressive.

I am slowly honing in to the sweet signals. The 1910 wheat pictured above was such a signal. This tiny park still has a lot to give up, and I am just the guy to get it.